IN-DEPTH REPORT: Multi-million dollar lawsuit filed over LQ flood damage (Part 1)

Jeanette Mendoza is still paying for last September’s devastating storm in La Quinta. Instead of furniture, she lives with piles of construction materials.

“I don’t know if the money I’m pouring is going to be turning into dirt again, into mud,” Mendoza said. “I had over $250,000 of damage. I work, it’s difficult, that’s why it’s taking long to get my house fixed.”

Mendoza lives at Avenue 50 and Eisenhower, an area that’s been dubbed “Lake Eisenhower.” In August 2013 and again in September 2014, it completely flooded.

“I have a daughter who is handicapped with special needs. I had to evacuate the house and on the way we were stuck. Our car floated away and we had to be rescued,” Mendoza said, fighting back tears. “There were two good samaritans that helped me get my daughter out of the car.”

Meanwhile back at her home, a river of muck and dirt destroyed everything in its path.

“There was mud everywhere, it was over two feet and it took everything.” Mendoza said.

“There was mud everywhere, it was several feet high,” said Harry Schaffer who lives in the Haciendas community across the street from Mendoza. His home, which sits along a golf course belonging to the La Quinta Resort, flooded last year too.

Schaffner exhausted his savings and maxed out credit cards to pay for the $100,000 worth of damage.

“My home and homes around me ended up being the retention pond for the city of La Quinta,” Schaffer said.

But the city denied all claims filed by homeowners over the damage. The city sent letters saying the area flooded because the La Quinta Resort didn’t maintain its drainage pipes and pumped water from the storm channel into lakes near Schaffer’s home.

“They’re blaming the resort. Each entity is blaming the other. A good government would say, let’s get to the bottom of this,” Schaffner said.

Floodwater from Eisenhower and Avenue 50 needs to drain into lakes on the golf course at the Haciendas. When the water gets too high, it’s supposed to escape into the storm channel.

Homeowners say the system worked in 2013, flooding the fairways in the storm channel. As a result, the course shut down for several months.

But Schaffner says last year the water didn’t flow into the channel and instead backed up into his community, leaving the golf course in that area nearly untouched.

“They blocked methods engineered to get the water into the system. We have a public storm channel and we have a private user, the La Quinta Resort pumping water out of the storm channel because they have a different goal which is to keep the golf course open,” Schaffner said.

We tried to ask the La Quinta Resort about these claims, but no one would speak with us.

Since the storm channel is operated by the Coachella Valley Water District, we also asked officials there. They said no comment.

Homeowners say what made the situation worse is they didn’t have flood insurance, because the city told them they didn’t need it. Schaffner says the city can’t blame that on the resort.

“A prudent government would have written another letter and said we think it’s better to get flood insurance. We wrote that you don’t need it, and we reconsidered,” Schaffner said.

Instead, the city called the storm an “act of God.” Homeowners like Schaffner and Mendoza say that answer isn’t good enough.

“These are people’s lives,” Mendoza said. This isn’t an act of God, this is an act of man and someone has to be responsible and do what’s right.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 airing Tuesday, August 4 at 6pm on News Channel 3.

Homeowners are represented by attorneys Larry Shea and Tom Girardi.